8 



ing to the archaeology of this large and most important 

 group of American caves. 



The discovery, by the saltpetre miners of 1812-15, of 

 bodies buried with care in some of the caves of Ken- 

 tucky and Tennessee, and the numerous articles which 

 had been found with them, was alluded to by Mr. Put- 

 nam, who stated that since his return from Kentucky he 

 had examined the body, and what remained of the very 

 large number of articles found with it, that was so widely 

 known as the "Mammoth Cave Mummy" sixty jears ago. 

 This body was, in reality, found in Short Cave, situated 

 about eight miles from the Mammoth Cave, and had been 

 taken to the latter place for the purpose of exhibition. 

 Mr. Putnam had visited the spot from which the body had 

 been taken, and from the location of the grave thought 

 that there was some evidence of the burial having been 

 prior to the fall of the roof rock, which seems to have 

 taken place in many of the caves in this region at a 

 remote time. In some of the caves large stalagmites 

 have formed over these fallen rocks, though in most of 

 the caves where this falling has occurred the passages 

 were dry at the time, and have so continued. He was 

 glad to state that though these priceless relics of a former 

 race had been sadly neglected, and many of the articles 

 found in the grave had been lost and others had gone to 

 decay, still enough remained at the rooms of the Amer- 

 ican Antiquarian Society at Worcester, to identify the 

 articles found by him in Salt Cave as the same in mate- 

 rial, design and structure as those found with the body 

 in Short Cave, so that he had thus secured undoubted 

 osteological characters of the race to go with the articles 

 of clothing, etc., of the people who had made use of Salt 

 Cave as a habitation, and he thought, from all that had 

 been found, we could, with little doubt, class this people 



